A stroll in a pixilated candy land. A sleigh ride with Santa through a virtual sky. Goblins, Goths and gingerbread galore. Elegant balls, all-night raves, discos and campfires on techno-colored beaches.

That’s what the holidays have been like in Second Life, a virtual world whose headquarters are in San Francisco, but whose inhabitants reside all over the globe. One of the computer games most favored by futurists, Second Life is exploding in popularity as more and more people embrace three-dimensional fantasy worlds.

Ricardo Castro, a 19-year-old Brazilian musical artist, enjoyed a typical Christmas Day feast with extended family and friends near Lisbon, Portugal. But as Monday wore on, he needed a break.

And so he teleported himself – or rather his avatar, a cartoon-like representation of himself named Rico LeShelle – to an ice skating rink in
Second Life is still no threat to traditional holiday celebrations. On Christmas Day, Imagination Island only had a handful of visitors. Out of a total of 2.1 million registered users, there were only about 13,000 exploring the 3,111 virtual islands at any given time.

That didn’t bother Castro, who created his account Dec. 23, and found himself feeling a bit overwhelmed in an online world where virtual theme parks double as private residences and extend endlessly into cyberspace, an ever-shifting panorama of real world replicas, like the Rockefeller Center and the Eiffel Tower, medieval castles and Bauhaus apartments, botanical gardens and tropical hideaways.

The buildings, landscaping, indeed everything, is created with software developed by Linden Lab, a San Francisco company that has received funding from computer pioneer Mitch Kapor, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Benchmark Capital and others.

The community’s creations “are just getting more amazing and extravagant each year,” said Jeska Dzwigalski, Linden Lab’s community developer.

Users have increased almost twentyfold since last year, the company reports.

“When you have no limits, you just want to play, play, play,” said a 38-year-old information-technology trainer from Detroit, who asked to be referred to by her avatar’s name, Gabrielle Riel, so she could continue to be anonymous in Second Life’s fantasy world.

As the avatar, Riel organized four caroling sessions in “the Historic Nation of Caledon,” an island that embraces all things Victorian.

Robert Gilnack, 21, a computer science student at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., joined a group of about a dozen carolers Saturday. Appearing as a robot, Gilnack alternately walked and flew from the Caledon Moors to the Caledon Cay while singing “Somerset Wassail” and “I Saw Three Ships.”

“It was a first for me,” Gilnack said. “Interesting to say the least.”

Some of Second Life’s corporate residents, who include Cisco Systems and IBM, got into the holiday spirit as well. NBC Universal opened a virtual Peacock Room and streamed performances of Robert Randolph of Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Marc Roberge of O.A.R.

Anyone with access to broadband Internet and whose computer meets certain requirements, can participate in Second Life. A premium account, which allows players to lease land, costs $72 a year.

The low cost and lack of complicated technical rules has attracted players from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Argentina, France, Italy and Brazil.

Husbands and wives have joined together, along with extended families, who use Second Life to stay connected.

“It makes the world a smaller place,” said Linda, a 48-year-old Canadian college instructor, who also seeks to separate her real-world identify from that of her avatar. “I find that to be one of the huge attractions.”

Like Christmas in the real world, retailers in Second Life, selling everything from virtual clothing to furniture to art, pulled out the stops to try to attract holiday shopperslooking for new clothing for their avatars or virtual gifts for online friends.

A 34-year-old New Yorker who goes by the online name of Teejay Dojoji said he ended up spending 150 Linden dollars to buy scuba gear for a friend he had made online.

“Dojoji” dropped by a gay beach party late Christmas Eve in Provincetown West. “I’m too excited to sleep,” he said via IM. “I wanted to see if anyone else was here.”

An ultra-orthodox rabbi, who plays Second Life with his wife, but doesn’t identify himself as a rabbi, drew a parallel between Second Life and the Jewish tradition of lighting a menorah, which occurred Wednesday in the virtual world.

“The light of the menorah is intended to shine outward not inwards,” said the rabbi, who asked to remain anonymous.“When we light the menorah in Second Life, we are essentially saying it doesn’t matter what time period you are in or what reality you are in … our responsibility is to spread light.”

"There is a general recognition that we don't need these military-style weapons in New Zealand, so it's very easy to win cross-party support for this," said Mark Mitchell, who was defense minister in the previous, center-right government and who supports the ban initiated by the center-left-led Labour Party.